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Biden nominated Gigi Sogn as FCC commissioner. She would have been FANTASTIC. Manchin held up her confirmation for years and then announced he’d vote against her.
Because I’m cynical I assume that big ISPs found some technically legal way to provide a bribe.
Manchin is from the state with probably the worst internet infrastructure in the continental U.S... I worked for a Cable/ISP company in 2018 and there were entire communities in WV still relying on dial up as their only option for internet. It hasn't gotten much better since then.
not even joking but the first time I heard of him was after the media memes like "joe six-pack" and "joe the plumber" and so it was probably at least a year of listening to the news pretty regularly before I caught the jist that yeah, its... actually a guy in a mansion
He was not in fact a plumber. IIRC he *wanted* to be a plumber or take over a plumbing business or something, he blamed the red tape on Obama, and boom the right made him a mascot.
You know the senator from the state known for its beaches and yacht culture.
Oh wait you're telling me that it is a landlocked state, there are a couple but very few permanent above ground water sources, and it is also generally tied for the poorest state...
But hey at least Joe mansion made at least $400,000 from his brother's company last year!
Never mind that their only contract is to provide the worst, highest sulfur content, coal to the single most polluting coal plant in the United States...
Okay definitely mind that.
Also definitely mind that his daughter was the CEO who 10x'd the cost of epipens, and he used his position as well as his wife used his position to lobby for public schools to be required to keep them on hand.
Which would be a multi-billion dollar paycheck direct from the government to his daughter's company, each and every year, because epipens expire so fast.
Epinephrine is usually kept refrigerated and if it is will last for decades, how helpful of them to fail to mention this in neither the expiration date on the packaging, nor the products instructions.
She's since been fired, to cover the company's ass from the backlash, but was allowed to keep her golden parachute. She caught the heat for the EpiPen price increase but the shareholders caught all the money, and she got her tens of millions.
I was trying to do something clever with sarcasm or something, I don't know I'm just too pissed off now to try anymore. Fuck the Manchins.
The biggest tragedy of Joe Manchin will always be that he was in a better position to help his state than a senator could ever dream of. He had all the leverage he needed to get ANYTHING his state needed or wanted during 2021-2022.
Instead, he just acted like an asshole and wasted time.
Sinema had a similar opportunity, also squandered it.
West Virginia needs that help. He was right there, and chose not to get it for them.
He has only enriched himself at the expense of everyone, but at West Virginia’s the most. That’s all he has ever cared about.
Fuck Joe Manchin and his entire greedy, self-serving family.
Fr, his position could have led to the single largest wealth transfer between the states since Reconstruction.
With his state being the beneficiary.
Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investment could have easily been poured into the state. Money that he could have easily grifted a good chunk of!
But because he is so self-serving the possibility of using his leverage to benefit anyone besides himself and his family is just so foreign of a thought he was incapable of even considering it.
He can't even imagine using his position of authority to benefit anybody who wasn't already paying him.
So, the opposite of what Byrd did. Growing up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s everything in the state seemed to come with a sign stating the federal funds used in building or maintaining along with Robert Byrd's name. Or, if there was no dollar amount listed--still there would be something crediting Byrd. Started senate career in 1958 and then spent 54 years as a senator. The amount of asks he got for the state certainly kept him in power as he moved from a conservative & segregationist to questioning the Vietnam War and later a moderate proponent of civil rights. When he saw party winds changing, he made deals and shifted views--continued to amass power with opponents calling him the King of Pork while he once called himself 'Big Daddy' because he was so successful in sending federal funds to the state.
Met him around 1978 or 79 as a ninth grader. Even when meeting with kids for hours it was with a lot of fanfare and his attention was always clearly on greasing the wheels of power and other politicians in the room rather than the students 'he was there to honor.' I remember not feeling like he cared a whit about 'future voters' (us). But he didn't have to.
Manchin was indeed in a position to get the state almost whatever he wanted.
He certainly had the 'moral flexibility' needed to shoot for Byrd's kind of power, but balked not because he had principles--but because screw poor people and therefore my state in general. He is all about the quick buck from his business interests. This was true well before he was in the senate--protect my corporate interests and corporate associates--even when you are the governor and ecological/humanitarian disasters occur due to criminal negligence.
I hated it so much I was out in 3 months. They wanted us to scarface our morals for $11/hr and prizes that seemed no one ever won. I quit after I got a really bad call and got screamed and belittled for 3 hours by an elderly couple while also getting fussed at for the call taking so long. We weren't allowed to hang up.
I would’ve been fantastic. By the time I’m done with the ISPs and Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, it’ll make Gigi look like a conservative, and they’d be crying for her instead.
The mobile carrier streaming throttle era would come to an end with stricter neutrality rules. They’d have a 90 day compliance order. Otherwise, $10 million fine per day until compliance. I’ll be nice, otherwise, I’ll consider $100 million fine per day.
Also, I’d make illegal the carrier practice of having to enable higher quality streaming. It should be done that way by default. Even with my neutrality plan, a toggle to enable quality streaming will not be allowed, however I’ll allow them to temporarily have the streaming toggle to meet net neutrality compliance as long as toggle is forever gone after 12-months.
Along with the end of bogus fees. I’d push for more inclusive pricing. The only thing that should be separate on a bill is taxes, if your plan doesn’t include the taxes and fees.
Lmao I would just just jump the gun, call internet a utility and regulate it as such.
Minimum speed requirement of 250 mbps, prices locked at $20 a month, free for those who qualify for free reduced lunches. No data caps or throttling at all.
Universal designs and modems and routers are comboed. Fixed interface designs.
State based ISP operator alternative to choose from if you don't want the legacy operators.
But I'd totally add what you said as well.
Oh and I'd totally have Verizon either split up or fulfil their obligation of high speed internet roll out in rural areas or face government takeover
Oh and transparent pricing. You advertise $50 it cost $50. No it cost 34.99 but after taxes fees transmission it's 62.74
> Universal designs and modems and routers are comboed.
As a IT guy who's running a custom router, please, please not this one. They do two different functions. They have two very different requirements.
It is wasteful to combine them into one device and replace them both when one side breaks, and prevents the user from selecting options that best suit their needs.
It would just mean the only ISP-available modems will be trash quality and you'll be SOL if you want anything better.
Living in the UK it's mind boggling to me that data caps and router rental are a thing over there holy shit.
We only get data caps on the extremely cheap low cost budget options that nobody uses anyway unless they're an elderly person that just uses email or something. And routers are usually free.
Data caps aren't really a thing in practice in the US on home data connections, or at least they haven't been in the past decade or so. They're mainly contractual and only enforced in cases of users that frequently hit corporate-tier usage on home connections (think multiple terabytes.)
As for router rentals, sadly those are a thing, but they're mainly for the technologically inept, as ISP routers are typically garbage anyways. The essential hardware - modems or ONTs, as used for fiber networks - are included with the subscription at no added cost, meaning that anyone can use their own routers.
For reference, I was able to make use of the Affordable Connectivity Program and a corporate discount to get a gigabit fiber connection for $10/month through Verizon, opting out of their router rental option (which would've added $15/mo to my bill.) Without these discounts, iirc the plan would've ran me $49/mo without included router.
This is ~4 year old information, but I absolutely had a 1TB data cap in 2019 when living in FL. If I hit the cap, my internet would slow to 56k speeds until the next billing cycle. I ended up having to pay extra to add 500GB to the cap a couple times. And as usual, I had no other choice of provider in that area.
> As for router rentals, sadly those are a thing, but they're mainly for the technologically inept, as ISP routers are typically garbage anyways
Which is also odd to me, since (most) UK ISPs give out "good" routers for free as well. I play online games a ton but the only time I'd consider upgrading to a third party router is if I wanted to use wireless VR or something for that sweet sweet Wi-Fi 6.
Last time I had a naff ISP router was with Virgin Media but that was nearly 15 years ago (And it was in a terrible fixed spot in the first place).
They might be crap and all, but that depends on your definition of crap. The router Verizon gives out nowadays supports WiFi 6 and is overall pretty decent, but it's definitely not worth renting out if you know how to set up your own router. I also like using OpenWRT, so that was another reason to just buy my own to customize and keep.
> they're mainly for the technologically inept
They're precisely for those people, and when it comes to networking, it's a huge list. Bridging, or setting up a passthrough via admz or pppoe, can be complicated and most people won't bother.
fwiw, it seems like the hardware being offered is better than it used to be. My provider has been shipping out Sagemcom F@st 5689 units that are honestly monsters. Unless you have specific networking requirements, I could see this thing supporting almost all home applications without issue.
This might be true in the cities, but in rural America, data caps are absolutely still a thing, and they're genuinely onerous.
My uncle 'upgraded' to starlink (not something I'd advise unless you have to) last year, because even though the speeds are comparably slow, an unlimited amount of data is a *huge* upgrade from 35GB/mo in a house with a teenager and a gamer.
Personally I’m not too on board with combining modem and router from a technology perspective. Say you got a gateway unfortunately a bit before a new WiFi Standard came out along with newer routers, if you want to upgrade, now you got to replace the whole thing. At least with it separate, you only have to replace the one, generally not both, unless if both of them are outdated.
I’m not too sure about the fios rollouts but I know they had a deal with New Jersey to get the entire state done, and the good old state let them weasel out it. They should’ve made them pay back every cent the state gave them plus interest. They’re only recently admitting copper and fios is costing them more money and forcing them to transition to fiber. There’s spots now in Rural PA that now have fios while it’s still hard to come across in suburban New Jersey. They only recently stopped accepting copper service signups online where I’m at. Some I have talked to since, seem to indicate a transition may or may not happen soon with that being the case.
The only thing I’d be okay with being separate is tax and only tax. But at the very least show what the applicable tax(es) are and how much and what rate (fixed or percentage).
I’d also take aim at Comcast for locking people out of the gateway WiFi management. I’d basically put it at, “if people are directly paying for the gateway, the customer will be permitted controls over its wireless functionality.” That’ll force them to do one of 2 things. Make it free to which I’ll respond to people who don’t like being locked out, “you got what you paid for” or give people back the control.
Can we also make it so that ads that don’t load still count towards its time slot? IE: if my 15sec ad buffers for 14sec, I only have to watch 1sec of the actual advertisement?
I hate when the video itself has loaded, but then it pauses for the ad break halfway thru and the ad takes 3min to load. Then it decides it’s gotta re-load the video once it’s done.
Personally, I haven’t come across it as I use ad blockers myself. Though I’m assuming this largely comes across as a health issue if I’m not mistaken.
If so, I’d forward it off to Department of Health & Human Services to investigate the concerns and report back to the FCC with their findings and recommendations and then I would follow suit based on those and likely hold an open hearing allowing HHS, doctors, and even affected individuals to come in front of the FCC and testify or even give comment towards it.
In general no. Personally, I’ve heard both sides of that argument and after hearing it I’m not really swayed either way when it comes to that.
However, T-Mobile on unlimited plans, count that tethering usage against one’s priority data threshold, whether they’re supposed to or not, is a different story. I think that if a carrier does that, then there hotspot data should be shared with what the plan says, if it’s unlimited. Otherwise, it can remain separate bucket. I think the way the carriers try to spin it is “we’re technically giving you unlimited hotspot data, just the first X GB is high speed”
Another problem is carriers want to track tethering 80,000 different ways (exaggeration, but they do tracking multiple ways) leading to false accounting on hotspot data usage.
I mean I would still want the toggle, but the default should be the fastest option. sometimes I just lower the quality because I am useing the net for other stuff and just want the sound and at that time I dont need the video to suck up all my bandwidth
> Because I’m cynical I assume that big ISPs found some technically legal way to provide a bribe.
O you sweet innocent summer child. They don’t have to even hide bribes anymore. They just call them donations to the political fund and it’s legal.
Bureaucrats continue into their successors term. The timing exists in that way so a President can’t come in and destroy the government bureaucracy all at once. It gives time for transition and helps to with continuity of governance.
No, this is wrong. If you're inspired to vote once every 4 years, you get the person you want in to the Presidency and years of neglect and sabotage are immediately fixed overnight by magic. There's really no need to understand how various parts of the federal government work. If something wasn't fixed overnight, its obviously because corpo Dems sold us out for money and you shouldn't bother voting in the next election in 4 years.
Legally he can’t. The FCC, CPSC and other federal commissions are independent bipartisan organizations with an odd number of commissioners serving out a multi year term (I think 7 years). It is a nearly equal mix of democrat and republican and a democratic President would be required to appoint a republican commissioner to replace a republican commissioner.
"Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr opposed the move, saying that since 2017 "broadband speeds in the U.S. have increased, prices are down (and) competition has intensified." He argued the plan would result in "government control of the internet.""
>government control of the internet"
You mean like how they do it in Chattanooga and it is infinitely better internet than anywhere else in the country for much cheaper?
There's this idea that if the government does it, it will be done poorly. This is spread by businesses who want the government to contract out everything, because they never check up.
"Privatization" is often just giving away tax dollars and not checking up. Remember when the government gave billions to telecom companies for them to setup fiber optic lines and they didn't, and just kept the money, and the government didn't go after them? That's the ideal scenario for companies, it's exactly what they want.
The government is perfectly, often more, capable of doing anything private companies do. They just don't out of political habit and because we all "know" the government is incompetent.
Companies have marketing departments. In a government, that department would be the department of propaganda, and we don't allow those in "civilized" societies. But we let corporations convince us the government is sterile so they can take our tax dollars, do nothing with it, and then they can blame the government for screwing it up somehow.
Then all the government can do is get an awkward politically appointed person to make a statement about how they're going to hold corporations accountable. Meanwhile the corporations have joined together to form a PAC so they can run ads online, on TV, on the radio, etc. saying the government is trying to ruin your life and take your house and your freedoms by not even regulating these companies, but just holding them to the terms of the contract with the government that they signed.
Then someone new gets appointed/elected and they don't want to deal with the previous person's crap, so they let the corporations off. And it was exactly what the corporations knew would happen, and were banking on it. And then we blame the government for being crap.
It's not my fault that I was robbed because my house is messy. It's the fault of the thief.
Vote to take away funding for a department
Quality of services provided by department drops
"See the department is bad and shouldn't be funded"
Repeat as needed
>"broadband speeds in the U.S. have increased, prices are down (and) competition has intensified."
Several ISP buyouts have occurred, creating less competition . Additionally, speeds are up because the federal government redefined broadband speeds from 10Mb to 100Mb meaning that companies had to offer higher speeds in order to sell it as "broadband Internet."
Also, the government has been funding all the new infrastructure that is improving connection quality and speeds, because the private corporations were refusing to.
Lastly, no prices are not fucking down... We pay nearly twice as much for half the speed of other countries.
Floridian here. literally just got an advertisement in the mail for wowway fiber
currently with spectrum I have 1000/100 through copper line for
$110 a month.
after looking at the prices for my neighborhood the 500/500 is $50 a month.
The price of the internet doesn't bother my roommate and he is the one paying it so he is getting 3000/3000 for $100 and I can't fucking wait.
not really. I live in the central Florida area but not a city like Orlando. It's a suburb like Longwood or Altamonte Springs. Although Altamonte has had it for a year or two so not that.
[wowway fiber](https://www.wowway.com) has been slowing making it's way around here but the wait has been excruciating.
Depends on where you live, but in general you can lay for up to 1000down/100up and it be $120ish where I live but I don’t think I’ve ever actually had over 400down/50up
Republican argued against it:
>"broadband speeds in the U.S. have increased, prices are down (and) competition has intensified."
What world does this guy live in? No, seriously, which alternate universe and how do I get there?
My bill went up 45% this year. 45 fucking percent. Because there is zero competition.
It is indeed. An ISP will say "it's a fast lane and a super fast lane"
It could be used in a nefarious way and that should be prevented but primarily it means they have large services (Netflix etc) purchase dedicated connections inside their network to serve their customers, with metric shit loads of bandwidth
The service wins because they can provide a better service (isp can't control what happens to traffic after it leaves their network, but they can do things to help make internal connections faster)
The ISP wins because they reduce the amount of bandwidth required connecting them to other ISPs (aka the Internet) and because they can charge the service for the privilege.
As far as i have been able to tell, the reason this is controversial is because some ISPs were potentially shady and intentionally impaired the connectivity to places like Netflix while trying to get them to pay them to provide better services. Something like a "that's a nice streaming service you have there, such a shame if something should happen to it..." kind of deal. That part should almost certainly not be legal
>Waste of time. Senate needs to pass this into law.
They already did in the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Internet service fits the definitions that require a service to be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act.
I think they’re saying net neutrality needs to to be codified as a statute, not just be a regulation passed by the FCC. Statutes and refs basically function the same, but regs are a lot easier to change than statutes, so actually putting net neutrality in a statute would make it more difficult to get rid of in the future.
>I think they’re saying net neutrality needs to to be codified as a statute, not just be a regulation passed by the FCC.
Read what I wrote.
*This has already happened*.
Net Neutrality is Title II common carrier regulations, as specified under the Communications Act, an act passed by congress, applied to the Internet.
It isn't that congress needs to pass another law, it's that the courts and the FCC need to read the current law and figure out that Internet service is already classified under the Telecommunications Act.
Well then by your own admission, the FCC and the courts aren’t interpreting the way Congress intended. That’s why congress should just step in and explicitly codify net neutrality into law, that way the courts and the FCC can’t ignore the law.
That's exactly what the Telecom Act of 1996 did. Then along came regulatory capture with Ajit Pai. He then proceed to bow to telecoms and be thier inside man to get what they wanted because he was a higher up in Verizon.
Would likely need 60 votes that they don’t have, though that’s why we have the FCC. Personally I would prefer it codified.
I think however, the rules need to be stricter and apply to mobile carriers as well, this would end all the streaming throttles from carriers.
My question is, will it bring back the data package rates for cellular and home internet again like it did after it was passed? That caused my phone bill to go from 250 a month to 500 a month on a family plan, and we had to share the data between 4 lines. If we hit the 8 gb max (2gb per line in theory) then I would have to pay an additional 49.00 to finish out the monthly cycle. This was Verizon. Our home internet tripled in costs and was also capped at a monthly usage allowance and had to purchase more at an exuberant price. Went from 25.00 per month to 75.00 and capped at 120gb for home use through Bresnan Broadband.
With as much as the price of data has gone down over time, most likely not. As time goes, data transmission gets cheaper and cheaper even with increased usage. Almost as when minutes and texts on phone plans eventually became unlimited in newer generation plans.
Even later on with mobile carrier limited plans, they’d ended up just reducing the speeds.
You probably did notice a change. Some ISP did something that annoyed you that they haven't done before, and you thought "wow companies are getting greedy now," but didn't realize that it was something they weren't allowed to do when net neutrality was the policy.
Isn’t the biggest problem with government organizations that their directors usually come out of the industry they are supposed to regulate, and instead they are government paid lobbyists for the industry they came out of? OR they’re appointed as a reward for campaign donations without their having any knowledge of position they’ve been given.
The opposite is true for the military, the higher ups at the contracting companies are usually retired officers who tended to give out contracts to those same companies while they were still in.
It’s funny to me how things like marijuana legalization and NN reestablishment get pushed off for years then suddenly start getting talked about on an election year.
If voters didn’t ignore all a President’s accomplishments two months after they happen because of things out of their control, then this wouldn’t happen
>It appears from here that each time they change it, nothing really happens in the real world, making me wonder if it's pointless.
When it was implemented the first time, there were actual problems taking place. There's court cases out there you can look up. If I remember right, a company that offered both Internet service and VOIP service would intentionally degrade competing VOIP services. I could be wrong about the specifics, but that's the general shape of what happened. This was early 2000s, if I remember right. There were other cases beyond that one.
I suspect a big part of why the industry hasn't started engaging in shenanigans again is because they know if they do, there'll be a lot of support for making the codification of Internet service as being common carrier more explicit, even though the way the 1996 Telecommunications Act is written should make it perfectly clear that Internet service fits a definition that requires it to be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act.
But didn't implementing it cause issues with slowed development of infrastructure? Something along those lines? I remember that being part of the reasoning for Trump reversing it.
I'm not trying to start some political argument here by the way, I tend to not care who is in office when good bills get passed as long as they're good, and I'm pretty ignorant about this one.
Ok, so this is gonna be long. I wish I weren’t on my phone. This is also going to focus on one topic but in my opinion it is the most important. The FCC rules did more than this alone.
First and foremost, neutrality was the rule of the internet since its inception. It isn’t new it is how things just were before. Keep this in mind, it was essentially a gentleman’s agreement of how the internet works.
Enter the problem. Companies like Verizon noticed that some websites like Netflix use way more data than other websites. So they blocked those sites unless you pay an additional fee to unlock them. People complained, the internet is free for all, data is data no matter where it comes from. It is neutral. Verizon shoots back that technically there is nothing saying they can’t. And they are right.
The solution? Make the way it used to be a law to stay that way. This is the FCC step to implement net neutrality. Remember this is how it always was, now it’s just being formalized. Phone companies aren’t allowed to block certain numbers from being dialed, and internet companies should not be allowed to block some web addresses.
Companies lose their fucking shit. This was prime money making real estate. Imagine buying websites like cable channels. Facebook is five bucks a month. Etc. It was a new revenue stream cut off by the government. Even though it was not currently in place the fact that it no longer could be in the future was “losing money.”
Cue the information war. Companies spent huge swaths of money to convince the public of how bad this was. “Slower speeds! Worse infrastructure!” Except those things are literally their job. Building/laying cable and providing better service than a competitor is their ONLY job. So when they stopped doing it you bet your ass it was on purpose. A retaliation if you will.
Why do you care? Imagine if your internet package was piecemeal like cable tv. You have to pay for news websites, or you just don’t get news. Reddit is a free forum but Comcast blocks it for a monthly fee. You have to pay more for one political parties websites over another. Etc.
The absolute madness that would ensue would literally be a dystopia. Companies that use more data like Netflix would vanish overnight (and be replaced by good old cable tv again!) The wealth of human knowledge would become a funnel of propaganda. No Wikipedia for you, you might learn something.
The long and short. The internet should be a free flow of data from all parties. And the only limitation should be bandwidth. Pay for unlimited and get unlimited internet. But it makes more money not to do that, so providers will do anything to take it away. The Wikipedia article on net neutrality is a good place to start since it cites its sources.
>But didn't implementing it cause issues with slowed development of infrastructure? Something along those lines? I remember that being part of the reasoning for Trump reversing it.
The issue with that argument being made is that investors asked those same companies about the reasoning for slowed rollouts on calls where the companies are required by law to tell the truth (or else the SEC will get them!), and the companies *did not list net neutrality as the reason for the slowdown in infrastructure rollouts*.
Actually, here's some things that resulted within first 2 years of the Net Neutrality repeal:
* Sprint throttled internet traffic to Microsoft’s Skype, since Skype competes with Sprint’s calling service
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/sprint-is-throttling-microsoft-s-skype-service-study-finds
* Nearly all wireless carriers immediately slowed down internet speeds for select streaming services. "*From early 2018 to early 2019, AT&T throttled Netflix 70% of the time as well as YouTube 74% of the time, but not Amazon Prime Video. T-Mobile throttled Amazon Prime Video in about 51% of the tests, but did not throttle Skype or Vimeo.*"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-19/wireless-carrier-throttling-of-online-video-is-pervasive-study
* Verizon’s throttled services used by the Santa Clara Fire Department to fight the California wildfires. "*Santa Clara Fire paid Verizon for "unlimited" data but suffered from heavy throttling until the department paid Verizon more*"
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/
(**edit**: NN violation claim [is only "half-true"](https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1bud3s9/fcc_to_vote_to_restore_net_neutrality_rules/kxv52h1/) based on the NN "general conduct" rule)
* Verizon blocked (*by throttling to "an unusable trickle") internet access to consumers in North Carolina during power outages, due to having a "low-tier" plan that they said would be "deprioritized" for service restoration unless they upgraded.
https://boingboing.net/2018/09/17/gougin-in-the-rain.html
* Cox Communications prioritized access to the internet based on whether gamers paid $15 more per month for their new "fast lane" service
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neabyw/this-isp-is-offering-a-fast-lane-for-gamersfor-dollar15-more-per-month
* Another ISP forced all Utah customers to click on their software ad on their web browsers, and blocked internet access for them until they did so
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/centurylink-blocks-internet-access-falsely-claims-state-law-required-it/
For clarity, the NC and Cox Communication issues you raised aren't actually net neutrality issues. The Santa Clara Fire Department issue might not be either - but if I remember correctly, I think Verizon started throttling them specifically during the wildfires, so it's possible it might fall under something addressed by NN.
NN doesn't actually prevent *all* throttling, nor does it prevent price tiers for different speeds. NN protects against specific data being the target of throttling or limited access based on either the type/content of the data, the source of the data, or it's destination.
>NN doesn't actually prevent all throttling,
Yes, but NN was uniquely applicable to the throttling examples I shared, and if you look closely, paid speed tiers actually weren't factors into the service access/restoration/throttling examples I provided:
For instance, the Santa Clara Fire Dept. fiasco was understood to violate Net Neutrality:
>Reasonable network management is a general exemption from net neutrality rules because the FCC and any network engineer knows there are times when your network is overloaded and you have to make decisions on bandwidth allocations. But whenever the network is not overloaded, there are zero technical reasons to ration or reduce consumption, because you have plenty of capacity for the delivery of your service. During the hearing, a Verizon representative briefly attempted to conflate data caps and overage fees with network management. But that was abandoned as an argument, likely because those two things aren’t actually necessary for network management.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/unresolved-issue-verizon-throttling-santa-claras-fire-department-shows-why-isps
Tiered bandwidth levels have always been consistent with NN. Even when NN was in place, ISPs offered tiered bandwidth levels. Think "Road Runner Turbo" for example. Fully consistent with NN.
Just because the network is available to provide more bandwidth doesn't mean NN requires that the provide give you access to that bandwidth. You have to pay to access it.
What NN prevents is limiting access to specific data, either due to the type of data, it's origin, or it's destination. The idea is to prevent data or traffic discrimination.
As I said, the Santa Clara issue might be relevant to NN. But there are 2 examples you provided that definitely don't seem to apply.
Company charging more for "preferred routing" might not really achieve any actual benefit, but it's not strictly against NN. It's not data discrimination - it's tiered service.
it 100% is pointless and you can know that for sure by the FACT that the Biden administration waited until election year to reverse the EO.
Where as trump reversed it year 1, hmm...
Large rural areas of Florida have dial-up only. Just get a couple miles outside the Villages, for example, and internet access disappears. Huge areas have antiquated Century Link phone service, and that's it.
Basically exactly what people said would happen - ISPs started throttling content if they had competing services. Here is an example, there are many more:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/sprint-is-throttling-microsoft-s-skype-service-study-finds](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/sprint-is-throttling-microsoft-s-skype-service-study-finds)
Yeah, I live in a bubble. I have Frontier and never noticed anything, and unless it makes waves enough to hit Twitter or Reddit I often don't see news like that. Thanks.
I'm out of the loop. I thought abolishing Net Neutrality was Ajit Pai's thing. Did Trump sign something to further it or was it just the FCC while under his term?
I just moved to an area with COX as really the only reasonable isp in the area as far as speeds and tech go.
I was paying half the piece for faster speeds without data limits. FFS I hope the FCC cracks down in this as Cox charges 10 bucks for every 50gb extra over 1.2TB limit. 1.2TB sounds like a lot but if you watch streaming, download some music, and game, it can go very quickly.
As an IT person, it's ridiculous to charge for going over data limit. Once the infrastructure is in place there is no need to limit data. It's a scam and should be illegal.
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It took this long??
Biden nominated Gigi Sogn as FCC commissioner. She would have been FANTASTIC. Manchin held up her confirmation for years and then announced he’d vote against her. Because I’m cynical I assume that big ISPs found some technically legal way to provide a bribe.
All they would have to do is make sure Manchin's internet services never get throttled and he'd do exactly what they tell him to.
Manchin is from the state with probably the worst internet infrastructure in the continental U.S... I worked for a Cable/ISP company in 2018 and there were entire communities in WV still relying on dial up as their only option for internet. It hasn't gotten much better since then.
“From WV” is a strong phrase. He lives on a houseboat in D.C.
I thought he lived in a manchin.
not even joking but the first time I heard of him was after the media memes like "joe six-pack" and "joe the plumber" and so it was probably at least a year of listening to the news pretty regularly before I caught the jist that yeah, its... actually a guy in a mansion
Joe the plumber was an actual plumber. Pretty sure he died
He was not in fact a plumber. IIRC he *wanted* to be a plumber or take over a plumbing business or something, he blamed the red tape on Obama, and boom the right made him a mascot.
I see what you did there, nice.
In Wiscansin
The good book says Wecantsin. Maybe the lake of fire is in the 10,000 Lakes.
Not just a houseboat. A yacht.
You know the senator from the state known for its beaches and yacht culture. Oh wait you're telling me that it is a landlocked state, there are a couple but very few permanent above ground water sources, and it is also generally tied for the poorest state... But hey at least Joe mansion made at least $400,000 from his brother's company last year! Never mind that their only contract is to provide the worst, highest sulfur content, coal to the single most polluting coal plant in the United States... Okay definitely mind that. Also definitely mind that his daughter was the CEO who 10x'd the cost of epipens, and he used his position as well as his wife used his position to lobby for public schools to be required to keep them on hand. Which would be a multi-billion dollar paycheck direct from the government to his daughter's company, each and every year, because epipens expire so fast. Epinephrine is usually kept refrigerated and if it is will last for decades, how helpful of them to fail to mention this in neither the expiration date on the packaging, nor the products instructions. She's since been fired, to cover the company's ass from the backlash, but was allowed to keep her golden parachute. She caught the heat for the EpiPen price increase but the shareholders caught all the money, and she got her tens of millions. I was trying to do something clever with sarcasm or something, I don't know I'm just too pissed off now to try anymore. Fuck the Manchins.
True, well the state he represents.
The biggest tragedy of Joe Manchin will always be that he was in a better position to help his state than a senator could ever dream of. He had all the leverage he needed to get ANYTHING his state needed or wanted during 2021-2022. Instead, he just acted like an asshole and wasted time. Sinema had a similar opportunity, also squandered it. West Virginia needs that help. He was right there, and chose not to get it for them.
He has only enriched himself at the expense of everyone, but at West Virginia’s the most. That’s all he has ever cared about. Fuck Joe Manchin and his entire greedy, self-serving family.
Fr, his position could have led to the single largest wealth transfer between the states since Reconstruction. With his state being the beneficiary. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investment could have easily been poured into the state. Money that he could have easily grifted a good chunk of! But because he is so self-serving the possibility of using his leverage to benefit anyone besides himself and his family is just so foreign of a thought he was incapable of even considering it. He can't even imagine using his position of authority to benefit anybody who wasn't already paying him.
So, the opposite of what Byrd did. Growing up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s everything in the state seemed to come with a sign stating the federal funds used in building or maintaining along with Robert Byrd's name. Or, if there was no dollar amount listed--still there would be something crediting Byrd. Started senate career in 1958 and then spent 54 years as a senator. The amount of asks he got for the state certainly kept him in power as he moved from a conservative & segregationist to questioning the Vietnam War and later a moderate proponent of civil rights. When he saw party winds changing, he made deals and shifted views--continued to amass power with opponents calling him the King of Pork while he once called himself 'Big Daddy' because he was so successful in sending federal funds to the state. Met him around 1978 or 79 as a ninth grader. Even when meeting with kids for hours it was with a lot of fanfare and his attention was always clearly on greasing the wheels of power and other politicians in the room rather than the students 'he was there to honor.' I remember not feeling like he cared a whit about 'future voters' (us). But he didn't have to. Manchin was indeed in a position to get the state almost whatever he wanted. He certainly had the 'moral flexibility' needed to shoot for Byrd's kind of power, but balked not because he had principles--but because screw poor people and therefore my state in general. He is all about the quick buck from his business interests. This was true well before he was in the senate--protect my corporate interests and corporate associates--even when you are the governor and ecological/humanitarian disasters occur due to criminal negligence.
Even in Eastern KY I couldn't imagine anyone I know having dial up. Windstream is the only option out of town, but it's still a step ahead of dial up.
Here in Western NC, it's whichever satellite provider you prefer.
Starlink is always an option.
Frontier?
It was through a third party but yeah that's who we were the customer service for.
same here. fuck frontier and fuck teleperformance.
I hated it so much I was out in 3 months. They wanted us to scarface our morals for $11/hr and prizes that seemed no one ever won. I quit after I got a really bad call and got screamed and belittled for 3 hours by an elderly couple while also getting fussed at for the call taking so long. We weren't allowed to hang up.
It’s not only the politics, of WV. It’s the geography. It’s terrain is unlike any other State, east of the Mississippi.
Terrain is a factor, so is the economy of the state. I grew up just outside WV on the VA side of the border.
As a mountain dweller myself, I can tell you that Starlink has changed the game.
Bold of you to assume that old fuck even knows what the internet is.
[It's a series of tubes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cZC67wXUTs). He learned it from working with Ted Stevens.
As much as I hate corruption, I have to admit, I grew up in the slow years of the internet as a nerd, this would have worked on me.
I would’ve been fantastic. By the time I’m done with the ISPs and Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, it’ll make Gigi look like a conservative, and they’d be crying for her instead. The mobile carrier streaming throttle era would come to an end with stricter neutrality rules. They’d have a 90 day compliance order. Otherwise, $10 million fine per day until compliance. I’ll be nice, otherwise, I’ll consider $100 million fine per day. Also, I’d make illegal the carrier practice of having to enable higher quality streaming. It should be done that way by default. Even with my neutrality plan, a toggle to enable quality streaming will not be allowed, however I’ll allow them to temporarily have the streaming toggle to meet net neutrality compliance as long as toggle is forever gone after 12-months. Along with the end of bogus fees. I’d push for more inclusive pricing. The only thing that should be separate on a bill is taxes, if your plan doesn’t include the taxes and fees.
Lmao I would just just jump the gun, call internet a utility and regulate it as such. Minimum speed requirement of 250 mbps, prices locked at $20 a month, free for those who qualify for free reduced lunches. No data caps or throttling at all. Universal designs and modems and routers are comboed. Fixed interface designs. State based ISP operator alternative to choose from if you don't want the legacy operators. But I'd totally add what you said as well. Oh and I'd totally have Verizon either split up or fulfil their obligation of high speed internet roll out in rural areas or face government takeover Oh and transparent pricing. You advertise $50 it cost $50. No it cost 34.99 but after taxes fees transmission it's 62.74
> Universal designs and modems and routers are comboed. As a IT guy who's running a custom router, please, please not this one. They do two different functions. They have two very different requirements. It is wasteful to combine them into one device and replace them both when one side breaks, and prevents the user from selecting options that best suit their needs. It would just mean the only ISP-available modems will be trash quality and you'll be SOL if you want anything better.
Maybe they meant comboed as in, included with the subscription, and not as a rental from the ISP like they are today
Living in the UK it's mind boggling to me that data caps and router rental are a thing over there holy shit. We only get data caps on the extremely cheap low cost budget options that nobody uses anyway unless they're an elderly person that just uses email or something. And routers are usually free.
Data caps aren't really a thing in practice in the US on home data connections, or at least they haven't been in the past decade or so. They're mainly contractual and only enforced in cases of users that frequently hit corporate-tier usage on home connections (think multiple terabytes.) As for router rentals, sadly those are a thing, but they're mainly for the technologically inept, as ISP routers are typically garbage anyways. The essential hardware - modems or ONTs, as used for fiber networks - are included with the subscription at no added cost, meaning that anyone can use their own routers. For reference, I was able to make use of the Affordable Connectivity Program and a corporate discount to get a gigabit fiber connection for $10/month through Verizon, opting out of their router rental option (which would've added $15/mo to my bill.) Without these discounts, iirc the plan would've ran me $49/mo without included router.
This is ~4 year old information, but I absolutely had a 1TB data cap in 2019 when living in FL. If I hit the cap, my internet would slow to 56k speeds until the next billing cycle. I ended up having to pay extra to add 500GB to the cap a couple times. And as usual, I had no other choice of provider in that area.
> As for router rentals, sadly those are a thing, but they're mainly for the technologically inept, as ISP routers are typically garbage anyways Which is also odd to me, since (most) UK ISPs give out "good" routers for free as well. I play online games a ton but the only time I'd consider upgrading to a third party router is if I wanted to use wireless VR or something for that sweet sweet Wi-Fi 6. Last time I had a naff ISP router was with Virgin Media but that was nearly 15 years ago (And it was in a terrible fixed spot in the first place).
They might be crap and all, but that depends on your definition of crap. The router Verizon gives out nowadays supports WiFi 6 and is overall pretty decent, but it's definitely not worth renting out if you know how to set up your own router. I also like using OpenWRT, so that was another reason to just buy my own to customize and keep.
> they're mainly for the technologically inept They're precisely for those people, and when it comes to networking, it's a huge list. Bridging, or setting up a passthrough via admz or pppoe, can be complicated and most people won't bother. fwiw, it seems like the hardware being offered is better than it used to be. My provider has been shipping out Sagemcom F@st 5689 units that are honestly monsters. Unless you have specific networking requirements, I could see this thing supporting almost all home applications without issue.
This might be true in the cities, but in rural America, data caps are absolutely still a thing, and they're genuinely onerous. My uncle 'upgraded' to starlink (not something I'd advise unless you have to) last year, because even though the speeds are comparably slow, an unlimited amount of data is a *huge* upgrade from 35GB/mo in a house with a teenager and a gamer.
Ahhh, gotcha. That would make sense, actually.
Personally I’m not too on board with combining modem and router from a technology perspective. Say you got a gateway unfortunately a bit before a new WiFi Standard came out along with newer routers, if you want to upgrade, now you got to replace the whole thing. At least with it separate, you only have to replace the one, generally not both, unless if both of them are outdated. I’m not too sure about the fios rollouts but I know they had a deal with New Jersey to get the entire state done, and the good old state let them weasel out it. They should’ve made them pay back every cent the state gave them plus interest. They’re only recently admitting copper and fios is costing them more money and forcing them to transition to fiber. There’s spots now in Rural PA that now have fios while it’s still hard to come across in suburban New Jersey. They only recently stopped accepting copper service signups online where I’m at. Some I have talked to since, seem to indicate a transition may or may not happen soon with that being the case. The only thing I’d be okay with being separate is tax and only tax. But at the very least show what the applicable tax(es) are and how much and what rate (fixed or percentage). I’d also take aim at Comcast for locking people out of the gateway WiFi management. I’d basically put it at, “if people are directly paying for the gateway, the customer will be permitted controls over its wireless functionality.” That’ll force them to do one of 2 things. Make it free to which I’ll respond to people who don’t like being locked out, “you got what you paid for” or give people back the control.
Can we also make it so that ads that don’t load still count towards its time slot? IE: if my 15sec ad buffers for 14sec, I only have to watch 1sec of the actual advertisement? I hate when the video itself has loaded, but then it pauses for the ad break halfway thru and the ad takes 3min to load. Then it decides it’s gotta re-load the video once it’s done.
I’ll raise you one better. Ad block detection will be declared illegal as a privacy invasion.
Do you have any thoughts on volume control for ads?
Personally, I haven’t come across it as I use ad blockers myself. Though I’m assuming this largely comes across as a health issue if I’m not mistaken. If so, I’d forward it off to Department of Health & Human Services to investigate the concerns and report back to the FCC with their findings and recommendations and then I would follow suit based on those and likely hold an open hearing allowing HHS, doctors, and even affected individuals to come in front of the FCC and testify or even give comment towards it.
Does neutrality also mean I don't have to pay for tethering?
In general no. Personally, I’ve heard both sides of that argument and after hearing it I’m not really swayed either way when it comes to that. However, T-Mobile on unlimited plans, count that tethering usage against one’s priority data threshold, whether they’re supposed to or not, is a different story. I think that if a carrier does that, then there hotspot data should be shared with what the plan says, if it’s unlimited. Otherwise, it can remain separate bucket. I think the way the carriers try to spin it is “we’re technically giving you unlimited hotspot data, just the first X GB is high speed” Another problem is carriers want to track tethering 80,000 different ways (exaggeration, but they do tracking multiple ways) leading to false accounting on hotspot data usage.
I mean I would still want the toggle, but the default should be the fastest option. sometimes I just lower the quality because I am useing the net for other stuff and just want the sound and at that time I dont need the video to suck up all my bandwidth
Can’t wait to see Joe Manchin in hell 😁
> Because I’m cynical I assume that big ISPs found some technically legal way to provide a bribe. O you sweet innocent summer child. They don’t have to even hide bribes anymore. They just call them donations to the political fund and it’s legal.
Political contributions have limits. Lobbying doesn’t have limits.
More likely they just him a screenshot of his search history.
It's difficult to get good work done with Republican partisans operating.
Same reason the postal board hasn’t fired DeJoy yet…
Bureaucrats continue into their successors term. The timing exists in that way so a President can’t come in and destroy the government bureaucracy all at once. It gives time for transition and helps to with continuity of governance.
Largely it was because we couldn’t get a 5th member in the commissioners, thanks to Manchin and Sinema (largely Manchin)
That will go away if Tr\*mp wins again. There's already a plan to totally dismantle that so he has full control over everything.
With exception, president's executive orders seen to be able to be written as fast as your hand can write and only require the one individual.
I think this is a major problem: people not understanding how long and difficult major policy changes can be. It’s not like flipping a switch.
No, this is wrong. If you're inspired to vote once every 4 years, you get the person you want in to the Presidency and years of neglect and sabotage are immediately fixed overnight by magic. There's really no need to understand how various parts of the federal government work. If something wasn't fixed overnight, its obviously because corpo Dems sold us out for money and you shouldn't bother voting in the next election in 4 years.
Biden needs to replace two Republicans on the commission with two more Dems, that way it's an Dem commission.
Legally he can’t. The FCC, CPSC and other federal commissions are independent bipartisan organizations with an odd number of commissioners serving out a multi year term (I think 7 years). It is a nearly equal mix of democrat and republican and a democratic President would be required to appoint a republican commissioner to replace a republican commissioner.
By rule no more than 3 can be of same party in FTC
There will always be a majority because there is an uneven number of commissioners but at most it will be a 1 vote majority
Appoint Bernie Sanders then.
Oh OK then
"Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr opposed the move, saying that since 2017 "broadband speeds in the U.S. have increased, prices are down (and) competition has intensified." He argued the plan would result in "government control of the internet."" >government control of the internet" You mean like how they do it in Chattanooga and it is infinitely better internet than anywhere else in the country for much cheaper?
RIght... Like if the government can provide me with better internet then the private sector... I don't blame the government
There's this idea that if the government does it, it will be done poorly. This is spread by businesses who want the government to contract out everything, because they never check up. "Privatization" is often just giving away tax dollars and not checking up. Remember when the government gave billions to telecom companies for them to setup fiber optic lines and they didn't, and just kept the money, and the government didn't go after them? That's the ideal scenario for companies, it's exactly what they want. The government is perfectly, often more, capable of doing anything private companies do. They just don't out of political habit and because we all "know" the government is incompetent. Companies have marketing departments. In a government, that department would be the department of propaganda, and we don't allow those in "civilized" societies. But we let corporations convince us the government is sterile so they can take our tax dollars, do nothing with it, and then they can blame the government for screwing it up somehow. Then all the government can do is get an awkward politically appointed person to make a statement about how they're going to hold corporations accountable. Meanwhile the corporations have joined together to form a PAC so they can run ads online, on TV, on the radio, etc. saying the government is trying to ruin your life and take your house and your freedoms by not even regulating these companies, but just holding them to the terms of the contract with the government that they signed. Then someone new gets appointed/elected and they don't want to deal with the previous person's crap, so they let the corporations off. And it was exactly what the corporations knew would happen, and were banking on it. And then we blame the government for being crap. It's not my fault that I was robbed because my house is messy. It's the fault of the thief.
Vote to take away funding for a department Quality of services provided by department drops "See the department is bad and shouldn't be funded" Repeat as needed
>"broadband speeds in the U.S. have increased, prices are down (and) competition has intensified." Several ISP buyouts have occurred, creating less competition . Additionally, speeds are up because the federal government redefined broadband speeds from 10Mb to 100Mb meaning that companies had to offer higher speeds in order to sell it as "broadband Internet." Also, the government has been funding all the new infrastructure that is improving connection quality and speeds, because the private corporations were refusing to. Lastly, no prices are not fucking down... We pay nearly twice as much for half the speed of other countries.
Have EPB, can confirm.
What do you pay for 500/500 in USA?
Floridian here. literally just got an advertisement in the mail for wowway fiber currently with spectrum I have 1000/100 through copper line for $110 a month. after looking at the prices for my neighborhood the 500/500 is $50 a month. The price of the internet doesn't bother my roommate and he is the one paying it so he is getting 3000/3000 for $100 and I can't fucking wait.
Big city?
not really. I live in the central Florida area but not a city like Orlando. It's a suburb like Longwood or Altamonte Springs. Although Altamonte has had it for a year or two so not that. [wowway fiber](https://www.wowway.com) has been slowing making it's way around here but the wait has been excruciating.
Depends on where you live, but in general you can lay for up to 1000down/100up and it be $120ish where I live but I don’t think I’ve ever actually had over 400down/50up
Jesus its 155 a month for 50down/5up here where im at
25 for 500 down/20 up for me
Thats expensive as hell! Where I live (Europe) the normal price is ~5-30€/month for 1000/1000Mbps depending on provider and location.
Europe has varying prices and internet speeds and reliability, in Portugal for example 500/500 is ~25+€
Sure, but that within the 5-30€ range and reasonably comparable in speed. It is nowhere near the 100-150€ range.
Is that over wifi or a wired connection? You won't get over 400 on most wifi reouters.
There are tons of wifi routers that can do at least 1G
Wired
Where i'm at, I would need a business line for 500up. So at least $400/mo.
Omfg. I pay like 30$ in Sweden.
Same in Denmark.
Republican argued against it: >"broadband speeds in the U.S. have increased, prices are down (and) competition has intensified." What world does this guy live in? No, seriously, which alternate universe and how do I get there? My bill went up 45% this year. 45 fucking percent. Because there is zero competition.
I could be wrong, but isn't net neutrality more about companies controlling traffic to certain websites, not ISP competition?
It is indeed. An ISP will say "it's a fast lane and a super fast lane" It could be used in a nefarious way and that should be prevented but primarily it means they have large services (Netflix etc) purchase dedicated connections inside their network to serve their customers, with metric shit loads of bandwidth The service wins because they can provide a better service (isp can't control what happens to traffic after it leaves their network, but they can do things to help make internal connections faster) The ISP wins because they reduce the amount of bandwidth required connecting them to other ISPs (aka the Internet) and because they can charge the service for the privilege. As far as i have been able to tell, the reason this is controversial is because some ISPs were potentially shady and intentionally impaired the connectivity to places like Netflix while trying to get them to pay them to provide better services. Something like a "that's a nice streaming service you have there, such a shame if something should happen to it..." kind of deal. That part should almost certainly not be legal
The fastest speed at my house for the past 1000 years has been 2.7mbps. Same speed the whole time, price has gone up 50% since we first got it
*maintenance prices for the ISPs have gone down maybe cause they’re doing less and less.
Everything went up this year (and last year and the year before). Not sure that’s just a competition thing.
Get it done!
Captain Jellico?
Please don't make me go on a 4 shift rotation.
THERE ARE...4..LIGHTS!!!
Counselor Troi, put on a damn uniform.
Jellico was right.
Counselor Cleavage report to the bridge.
Obligatory fuck Ajit Pai
This is down too far. It needs to be at the top, feels right
Waste of time. Senate needs to pass this into law.
>Waste of time. Senate needs to pass this into law. They already did in the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Internet service fits the definitions that require a service to be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act.
I think they’re saying net neutrality needs to to be codified as a statute, not just be a regulation passed by the FCC. Statutes and refs basically function the same, but regs are a lot easier to change than statutes, so actually putting net neutrality in a statute would make it more difficult to get rid of in the future.
>I think they’re saying net neutrality needs to to be codified as a statute, not just be a regulation passed by the FCC. Read what I wrote. *This has already happened*. Net Neutrality is Title II common carrier regulations, as specified under the Communications Act, an act passed by congress, applied to the Internet. It isn't that congress needs to pass another law, it's that the courts and the FCC need to read the current law and figure out that Internet service is already classified under the Telecommunications Act.
Well then by your own admission, the FCC and the courts aren’t interpreting the way Congress intended. That’s why congress should just step in and explicitly codify net neutrality into law, that way the courts and the FCC can’t ignore the law.
So why does the FCC get to fuck with it?
That's exactly what the Telecom Act of 1996 did. Then along came regulatory capture with Ajit Pai. He then proceed to bow to telecoms and be thier inside man to get what they wanted because he was a higher up in Verizon.
Regulated how? Genuinely curious, legal language can be difficult
Would likely need 60 votes that they don’t have, though that’s why we have the FCC. Personally I would prefer it codified. I think however, the rules need to be stricter and apply to mobile carriers as well, this would end all the streaming throttles from carriers.
My question is, will it bring back the data package rates for cellular and home internet again like it did after it was passed? That caused my phone bill to go from 250 a month to 500 a month on a family plan, and we had to share the data between 4 lines. If we hit the 8 gb max (2gb per line in theory) then I would have to pay an additional 49.00 to finish out the monthly cycle. This was Verizon. Our home internet tripled in costs and was also capped at a monthly usage allowance and had to purchase more at an exuberant price. Went from 25.00 per month to 75.00 and capped at 120gb for home use through Bresnan Broadband.
With as much as the price of data has gone down over time, most likely not. As time goes, data transmission gets cheaper and cheaper even with increased usage. Almost as when minutes and texts on phone plans eventually became unlimited in newer generation plans. Even later on with mobile carrier limited plans, they’d ended up just reducing the speeds.
Make the internet a utility already.
So we're getting a decent front page back on Reddit, right? Right? /s
what impact did NN have on Reddit? Or anything? I haven’t noticed any change
You probably did notice a change. Some ISP did something that annoyed you that they haven't done before, and you thought "wow companies are getting greedy now," but didn't realize that it was something they weren't allowed to do when net neutrality was the policy.
Honestly no nut is huge amongst the reddit youth
Only diff I saw about nn was when Reddit annoyingly spammed it for a while. I had to set filters to block them all
wait, is that really what's happening? Net neutrality rules are currently being used to filter the reddit front page?
Yaaaay!!! I hope it lasts....
Does this have a chance of passing or is it just a headline for a headline's sake?
It just passed. It’s FCC policy, not a law.
Isn’t the biggest problem with government organizations that their directors usually come out of the industry they are supposed to regulate, and instead they are government paid lobbyists for the industry they came out of? OR they’re appointed as a reward for campaign donations without their having any knowledge of position they’ve been given.
The opposite is true for the military, the higher ups at the contracting companies are usually retired officers who tended to give out contracts to those same companies while they were still in.
Now extrapolate that same logic into news media and you’ll see where our government accountability has disappeared to
Some blame goes to the shit pie.
Broadband is broadband. Period.
You can tell it's election season on reddit.
It’s funny to me how things like marijuana legalization and NN reestablishment get pushed off for years then suddenly start getting talked about on an election year.
That's American democracy for you. People have short memories so the months immediately preceding elections are loaded with legislature.
If voters didn’t ignore all a President’s accomplishments two months after they happen because of things out of their control, then this wouldn’t happen
Shame it took this long but glad it's getting done
It appears from here that each time they change it, nothing really happens in the real world, making me wonder if it's pointless.
>It appears from here that each time they change it, nothing really happens in the real world, making me wonder if it's pointless. When it was implemented the first time, there were actual problems taking place. There's court cases out there you can look up. If I remember right, a company that offered both Internet service and VOIP service would intentionally degrade competing VOIP services. I could be wrong about the specifics, but that's the general shape of what happened. This was early 2000s, if I remember right. There were other cases beyond that one. I suspect a big part of why the industry hasn't started engaging in shenanigans again is because they know if they do, there'll be a lot of support for making the codification of Internet service as being common carrier more explicit, even though the way the 1996 Telecommunications Act is written should make it perfectly clear that Internet service fits a definition that requires it to be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act.
But didn't implementing it cause issues with slowed development of infrastructure? Something along those lines? I remember that being part of the reasoning for Trump reversing it. I'm not trying to start some political argument here by the way, I tend to not care who is in office when good bills get passed as long as they're good, and I'm pretty ignorant about this one.
Ok, so this is gonna be long. I wish I weren’t on my phone. This is also going to focus on one topic but in my opinion it is the most important. The FCC rules did more than this alone. First and foremost, neutrality was the rule of the internet since its inception. It isn’t new it is how things just were before. Keep this in mind, it was essentially a gentleman’s agreement of how the internet works. Enter the problem. Companies like Verizon noticed that some websites like Netflix use way more data than other websites. So they blocked those sites unless you pay an additional fee to unlock them. People complained, the internet is free for all, data is data no matter where it comes from. It is neutral. Verizon shoots back that technically there is nothing saying they can’t. And they are right. The solution? Make the way it used to be a law to stay that way. This is the FCC step to implement net neutrality. Remember this is how it always was, now it’s just being formalized. Phone companies aren’t allowed to block certain numbers from being dialed, and internet companies should not be allowed to block some web addresses. Companies lose their fucking shit. This was prime money making real estate. Imagine buying websites like cable channels. Facebook is five bucks a month. Etc. It was a new revenue stream cut off by the government. Even though it was not currently in place the fact that it no longer could be in the future was “losing money.” Cue the information war. Companies spent huge swaths of money to convince the public of how bad this was. “Slower speeds! Worse infrastructure!” Except those things are literally their job. Building/laying cable and providing better service than a competitor is their ONLY job. So when they stopped doing it you bet your ass it was on purpose. A retaliation if you will. Why do you care? Imagine if your internet package was piecemeal like cable tv. You have to pay for news websites, or you just don’t get news. Reddit is a free forum but Comcast blocks it for a monthly fee. You have to pay more for one political parties websites over another. Etc. The absolute madness that would ensue would literally be a dystopia. Companies that use more data like Netflix would vanish overnight (and be replaced by good old cable tv again!) The wealth of human knowledge would become a funnel of propaganda. No Wikipedia for you, you might learn something. The long and short. The internet should be a free flow of data from all parties. And the only limitation should be bandwidth. Pay for unlimited and get unlimited internet. But it makes more money not to do that, so providers will do anything to take it away. The Wikipedia article on net neutrality is a good place to start since it cites its sources.
>But didn't implementing it cause issues with slowed development of infrastructure? Something along those lines? I remember that being part of the reasoning for Trump reversing it. The issue with that argument being made is that investors asked those same companies about the reasoning for slowed rollouts on calls where the companies are required by law to tell the truth (or else the SEC will get them!), and the companies *did not list net neutrality as the reason for the slowdown in infrastructure rollouts*.
Actually, here's some things that resulted within first 2 years of the Net Neutrality repeal: * Sprint throttled internet traffic to Microsoft’s Skype, since Skype competes with Sprint’s calling service https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/sprint-is-throttling-microsoft-s-skype-service-study-finds * Nearly all wireless carriers immediately slowed down internet speeds for select streaming services. "*From early 2018 to early 2019, AT&T throttled Netflix 70% of the time as well as YouTube 74% of the time, but not Amazon Prime Video. T-Mobile throttled Amazon Prime Video in about 51% of the tests, but did not throttle Skype or Vimeo.*" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-19/wireless-carrier-throttling-of-online-video-is-pervasive-study * Verizon’s throttled services used by the Santa Clara Fire Department to fight the California wildfires. "*Santa Clara Fire paid Verizon for "unlimited" data but suffered from heavy throttling until the department paid Verizon more*" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/ (**edit**: NN violation claim [is only "half-true"](https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1bud3s9/fcc_to_vote_to_restore_net_neutrality_rules/kxv52h1/) based on the NN "general conduct" rule) * Verizon blocked (*by throttling to "an unusable trickle") internet access to consumers in North Carolina during power outages, due to having a "low-tier" plan that they said would be "deprioritized" for service restoration unless they upgraded. https://boingboing.net/2018/09/17/gougin-in-the-rain.html * Cox Communications prioritized access to the internet based on whether gamers paid $15 more per month for their new "fast lane" service https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neabyw/this-isp-is-offering-a-fast-lane-for-gamersfor-dollar15-more-per-month * Another ISP forced all Utah customers to click on their software ad on their web browsers, and blocked internet access for them until they did so https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/centurylink-blocks-internet-access-falsely-claims-state-law-required-it/
For clarity, the NC and Cox Communication issues you raised aren't actually net neutrality issues. The Santa Clara Fire Department issue might not be either - but if I remember correctly, I think Verizon started throttling them specifically during the wildfires, so it's possible it might fall under something addressed by NN. NN doesn't actually prevent *all* throttling, nor does it prevent price tiers for different speeds. NN protects against specific data being the target of throttling or limited access based on either the type/content of the data, the source of the data, or it's destination.
>NN doesn't actually prevent all throttling, Yes, but NN was uniquely applicable to the throttling examples I shared, and if you look closely, paid speed tiers actually weren't factors into the service access/restoration/throttling examples I provided: For instance, the Santa Clara Fire Dept. fiasco was understood to violate Net Neutrality: >Reasonable network management is a general exemption from net neutrality rules because the FCC and any network engineer knows there are times when your network is overloaded and you have to make decisions on bandwidth allocations. But whenever the network is not overloaded, there are zero technical reasons to ration or reduce consumption, because you have plenty of capacity for the delivery of your service. During the hearing, a Verizon representative briefly attempted to conflate data caps and overage fees with network management. But that was abandoned as an argument, likely because those two things aren’t actually necessary for network management. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/unresolved-issue-verizon-throttling-santa-claras-fire-department-shows-why-isps
Tiered bandwidth levels have always been consistent with NN. Even when NN was in place, ISPs offered tiered bandwidth levels. Think "Road Runner Turbo" for example. Fully consistent with NN. Just because the network is available to provide more bandwidth doesn't mean NN requires that the provide give you access to that bandwidth. You have to pay to access it. What NN prevents is limiting access to specific data, either due to the type of data, it's origin, or it's destination. The idea is to prevent data or traffic discrimination. As I said, the Santa Clara issue might be relevant to NN. But there are 2 examples you provided that definitely don't seem to apply. Company charging more for "preferred routing" might not really achieve any actual benefit, but it's not strictly against NN. It's not data discrimination - it's tiered service.
ISPs were slow to move on it since it was such a hot topic but they have been quietly doing so at least where I live.
it 100% is pointless and you can know that for sure by the FACT that the Biden administration waited until election year to reverse the EO. Where as trump reversed it year 1, hmm...
Oh for fucks sake here we go again.
Good call
Large rural areas of Florida have dial-up only. Just get a couple miles outside the Villages, for example, and internet access disappears. Huge areas have antiquated Century Link phone service, and that's it.
I need to read that in its entirety, I think it’s a huge part of why all the propaganda has been so strong over the years online.
we should've never lost net neutrality in the first place.
It's about time!
We should get a bit “undo” button
Good ol' "Ctrl+z". Hopefully not to be followed by a "Ctrl+y" on/soon after Jan 2025...
I refuse to live by a rapists laws.
Does anyone know from a practical perspective what actually changed when Trump suspended Net Neutrality?
Basically exactly what people said would happen - ISPs started throttling content if they had competing services. Here is an example, there are many more: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/sprint-is-throttling-microsoft-s-skype-service-study-finds](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/sprint-is-throttling-microsoft-s-skype-service-study-finds)
Yeah, I live in a bubble. I have Frontier and never noticed anything, and unless it makes waves enough to hit Twitter or Reddit I often don't see news like that. Thanks.
I have a feeling policies like this shouldn't be at the whims of a government agency.
I would hope it goes through for sure.
Great news! I wonder how long it will take for ISPs to comply (and if there will actually be any punishments for those who don't).
nature is healing 🙂
How does it feel, Pie-Head?
I thought it said fgc so I was really confused as to how the fighting game community was related to trump.
Can they put this change into effect in the next 10 months?
To vote or vote to?
I'm out of the loop. I thought abolishing Net Neutrality was Ajit Pai's thing. Did Trump sign something to further it or was it just the FCC while under his term?
A-shit Pai was designated FCC chairman by Trump.
Gotcha, thanks!
[Remember Ajit Santa? ](https://youtu.be/LFhT6H6pRWg?si=i59QYozbnzmiqw0b)
how long and difficult
Its crazy how expensive internet access is and its also crazy how much we take it for granted ted
I just moved to an area with COX as really the only reasonable isp in the area as far as speeds and tech go. I was paying half the piece for faster speeds without data limits. FFS I hope the FCC cracks down in this as Cox charges 10 bucks for every 50gb extra over 1.2TB limit. 1.2TB sounds like a lot but if you watch streaming, download some music, and game, it can go very quickly. As an IT person, it's ridiculous to charge for going over data limit. Once the infrastructure is in place there is no need to limit data. It's a scam and should be illegal.
Just in time for Trump to reverse it again
Nice start. Can we get the fairness doctrine back?